Athearn Special Edtion loco sets

[loco8107]

What year did they release them? I’m thinking late 90’s or so but I can’t remember or find any info on google.

[Mr. Trainiac]

I guess it depends what Special Edition set you have. There are quite a few packaged in the SE box. Some are just promotional runs with Athearn logos, while other models are actual limited-edition prototypical schemes.

The HO Seeker archive website has a list published in 1997 showing the previously-released sets. hoseeker.net/AthearnBrochuresAds/Athearnspecialeditionlist.jpg

I'm not sure how much longer these sets ran, maybe into the early 2000's? I see these boxes pop up on eBay pretty often for different things like the intermodal cars and custom containers and they always look in pretty good shape, so I'm assuming some of these were released relatively recently. The well car SE set is not on the 1997 list, so there had to have been more in 1998 and later.

Of course, 2008 was the last year of Blue Box, so Special Editions had to have ceased by then.

[loco8107]

I don’t have any nor plan on it just wondering when they were done. Thanks for the info.

[lvrr325]

I have a copy of the Krause Standard Guide to Athearn and it notes they were released monthly, sometimes two in a month, starting November 1995. It lists through Dec. 1997 but the book was printed in 1998. They show in that time 22 locomotive sets and 15 freight car sets including cabooses and a set of containers.

[hudsonyard]

quite a few old friends on that list, the CR 38-2/1000 combo was a fixture in the first real "yard" i had on one of my childhood layouts.

[loco8107]

May 26, 2023 23:25:04 GMT -8 hudsonyard said:

quite a few old friends on that list, the CR 38-2/1000 combo was a fixture in the first real "yard" i had on one of my childhood layouts.

They also had a decent Conrail OLS set too. A shame one had to be a dummy unit these SE sets.

[lvrr325]

Wasn't hard to swap a chassis though

[blhs569]

I picked a SE set of two GATX lease fleet SD40-2's back in 2000, but the dealer may have been sitting on them for a while as they were deeply discounted to nearly a third the original price.

[atsfcf7]

I owned a hobby shop from 1997 through 2000.  I carried the Athearn SE sets.  I kept two of the Santa Fe bluebonnet/yellowbonnet F7 sets for myself.

[loco8107]

Makes you wonder how many of each set was made given a good amount are them on eBay at any given time over 20 years later.

[surlyknuckle]

Not sure if Athearn kept records like at in the Blue Box days. I bet it depends on the make/model; some sets are more common than others. That is especially true when looking for mint condition sets that were never assembled. I've been collecting the sets over the last several years. I had several SE sets as a kid in the late 90s, but many succumbed to poor assembly/poor weathering/combination of the two. So I re-bought all the sets formerly in my collection (Tropicana cars, FGE cars, CSXT patched GPs...), plus the ones I wanted but never got (GATX SD40-2 set, EMD leaser set, MRL SD set...). Still would like to add the Kaiser U30C set and NWP SD9 set some day...

[lvrr325]

Jun 2, 2023 14:57:10 GMT -8 loco8107 said:

Makes you wonder how many of each set was made given a good amount are them on eBay at any given time over 20 years later.

These sets were made before preorders, so Irv or whoever was in charge at that point would run off 200, 400, 1000, whatever and they'd ship out as many as were ordered and sell through the rest over time.   Wasn't a big deal since the plant was right there to set the tooling up and run off what they needed. 

There probably is a definite quantity of each one, but clearly it's more than the demand was.  Just as an example, the GP30 they recut the dies into the GP35 in 1966 but three years later still had some left to sell. 

[ed]

I have been selling my sets off at train shows over the past few years. Little by little, they've sold.